Thursday, August 20, 2009

How to make a bootable USB memory stick in Windows 7

I spent ages on this last night without any success, tonight it took me about 60 seconds. Here is the trick.

First you need to download Windows Enabler from http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/speedload/Enabler.htm. This allows any disabled controls to be re-enabled. Install the program and click on its system tray icon to enable it. The Icon should show ‘on’ to show it’s working :

With Windows Enabler running you can go into Windows Explorer and format your memory stick (obviously this will erase everything on the stick). Normally the “create an MS-DOS startup disk” is disabled for everything except floppy disks but with Windows Enabler running you can click the disabled checkbox to use the option with any drive.

I think the file system needs to be set to “FAT”. Once formatted your stick will be a bootable MS-DOS 4.9.3000 boot disk. Easy!